To kickoff October as National Stamp Collecting month, the Postal Service™ will issue the Earthscapes Forever® stamps on October 1, 2012, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, DC. Postmasters are encouraged to conduct special dedications ceremonies — especially near stamp subject locations and where the photographers reside.

Inviting the photographers to participate in an event is a tremendous media draw. Contact photographers unable to attend events for the backstory on the stamp before pitching them to local media as a phone interview to add value to the event’s news coverage. Corporate Communications area managers are available to assist in publicizing activities.

The stamp pane features 15 stamps in three rows of five. The top row shows five examples of natural earth­scapes. The middle row focuses on a wide range of agricul­tural earthscapes. The bottom row shows urban earthscapes. In all cases, art director Howard Paine chose photographs to showcase designs, patterns, and geo­graphic diversity.

The Earthscapes Forever stamps allow customers an opportunity to see the world in a new way. This stamp pane presents examples of three categories of earthscapes: nat­ural, agricultural, and urban. The photographs were all cre­ated high above the planet’s surface, either snapped by “eyes in the sky” — satellites orbiting the Earth — or care­fully composed by photographers in aircraft.

In the top row, we fly over America’s stunning wilder­ness. While a volcanic eruption scars the forests of Wash­ington State, fog drifts over the timeless sandstone towers of Utah’s Monument Valley. In Alaska, a wide stripe that looks like a highway is actually a glacier, an immense con­veyer belt of ice. At its base, jagged white shards resem­bling broken glass are really icebergs, bobbing in a lake.

The stamps in the center row may look like abstract art, but they show five products being gathered, grown, or har­vested: salt, timber, grain, cherries, and cranberries. Cen­ter-pivot irrigation systems create geometric shapes in the middle stamp — although bystanders on the ground might see only sprinklers in fields of wheat, alfalfa, corn, and soy­beans.

Salt is harvested from seawater in evaporation ponds near San Francisco, California. As natural evaporation occurs, salinity levels increase and the concentrations of algae and other microorganisms in the water change, causing the ponds to take on vivid colors. Photo by Barrie Rokeach of Berkeley, CA, 510-527-9470 or 501-918-0809, Barrie@rokeachphoto.com

“Islands” of wood — log rafts made up of harvested timber — travel by water toward an Idaho mill for processing. This older method of transport has largely died out. Today the timber industry relies on rail and roads to transport trees and tree products from forests to sawmills. Circa 2005 photo taken in Idaho by Tom Brakefield of Hendersonville, TN, 615-822-9477, tbrakefield@comcast.net. Brakefield was as a passenger in an ultra-light aircraft. He encountered steep canyons and strong winds when taking this picture.

A Massachusetts cranberry bog holds a bounty of ripe red fruit. During the fall harvest, growers flood bogs, then mechanically churn the water to dislodge cranberries from their low-lying vines. They round up the floating fruit with booms, and convey it to receiving stations for cleaning. Photo by Steve Dunwell of Boston, MA, 617-423-4916, steve@stevedunwell.com

A shallow creek winds through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Rich tidal marsh makes up much of the refuge’s more than 25,000 acres, forming a haven for fox squirrels and bald eagles, and a stopping-off point for ducks and geese migrating along the Atlantic Flyway. Photo by Cameron Davidson of Alexandria, VA, 703-845-0547, cameron@camerondavidson.com, cameron.davidson@mac.com

Suburbia in Clark County, NV —the state’s most populous county — provides a maze of pavement, sidewalks, and single-family homes. In this desert development, swimming pools and clumps of trees provide some relief from the heat of summer. Stock house photo; photographer contact unavailable.

A pair of towboats “wrangle” commercial barges in the Old River barge fleeting area near the Houston Ship Channel in Texas. The channel allows access from the Gulf of Mexico to the Port of Houston, a major industrial center. The photograph of the Apollo (top) and Taurus (bottom, formerly named Marie Cenac) was taken by Jim Wark of Pueblo, CO, 719-545-1051, airphotona@comcast.net

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation — 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of post­age, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most fre­quently visited website in the federal government, USPS.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service was ranked number one in overall service performance, out of the posts of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, by Oxford Strategic Consulting. BlackEnterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

[City, State] — The [Name] Post Office celebrated October as National Stamp Collecting Month with a special dedication ceremony of the Earthscapes Forever stamps that put attendees on cloud nine. [Optional: Highlighting the event were remarks from Earthscapes stamp photographer [Name] who gave the back story on his iconic photograph.”]

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation — 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its oper­ations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, USPS.com,the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, Oxford Strategic Consulting ranked the U.S. Postal Service number one in overall service perfor­mance of the posts in the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business mag­azines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agencyfor six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

n One Earthscapes stamp depicts a Yellowstone National Park geothermal spring where the temperatures reach almost 190 degrees, making it too hot for humans. But that doesn’t mean it’s lifeless. As we look at the image on the stamp, we see colorful pigments produced by bac­teria and algae, which thrive in environments like this.

n One Earthscapes stamp shows a Northern California salt evaporation pond, where we see how rising salinity levels have transformed the microorganisms below the surface. The result is a series of vivid reds, pinks, and purples, framed by brilliant yellow.

n We find artistry in the Earthscapes stamp that shows a high-rise apartment complex on Man­hattan’s Upper West Side. And when we say “complex,” we’re not kidding: This image offers an endless row of balconies and windows, all cast against a grid of yellow brick.

n One Earthscapes stamp shows ice breaking from the foot of Alaska’s Bear Glacier and becoming icebergs in a lake. The result: streaks of white cast against a background of brilliant blues and deep earth tones.

n In the Earthscapes stamp that depicts Mount Saint Helen in Washington State, we see how the area is still recovering from the eruption of 1980. Shades of white and gray indicate still-bare slopes, while flashes of green illustrate the re-growth of vegetation.

n On one Earthscapes stamp, we see Stagecoach Butte, one of the many red sandstone for­mations rising from the floor of the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in southeastern Utah. The fog rolling across the terrain lends this image an aura of mystery and natural intrigue.

n The Earthscapes stamp that depicts the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore shows a shallow creek of deep blue water winding through bright green marshland. This is a haven for fox squirrels and bald eagles and a stopping-off point for ducks and geese migrating along the Atlantic Flyway.

n The Earthscapes stamp that depicts circular patterns on Kansas cropland show where sprin­kler systems have been at work. Each circle tells a story: the red circles indicate healthy, irri­gated crops, while the lighter circles show crops that have been harvested.

n A sure sign of springtime is seen in the Earthscapes stamp that shows a cherry orchard in Door County, Wisconsin. This area is known for its tart red cherries, and in this beautiful image, it seems as if every tree is in bloom.

n One of the Earthscapes stamps looks like a mass of brilliant red, but look closely and you realize you’re looking at a cranberry bog. The image shows two growers rounding up the floating fruit during a fall harvest in Massachusetts.

n On one of the Earthscapes stamps, we see a pair of towboats wrangling commercial barges in the Old River barge fleeting area near the Houston Ship Channel in Texas. In this image, the barges — cast in shades of red, green, and orange — pop against the deep blue background.

n One of the Earthscapes stamps looks like a series of circles, colored in shades of orange and gray. Scrutinize it a little more closely and you discover you’re actually looking at a railroad roundhouse. The image, captured in Scranton, Pennsylvania, shows the giant turntable that is used to turn around early 20th century locomotives when they undergo maintenance.

n Motorists in Miami may recognize one of the Earthscapes stamps, although they may have never seen it like this before. The image shows where Highways 95 and 395 converge in a carefully engineered, multi-level interchange. It’s an aerial view of one of America’s urban crossroads.

n One of the Earthscapes stamps offers a unique look at suburbia. In the image, we see a maze of pavement, sidewalks, and single-family homes in Clark County, Nevada, the state’s most populous county. Look closely and you’ll also see the swimming pools and clumps of trees that provide summertime relief in this desert development.

Some of the pictures on the Earthscapes stamps were taken by satellites. These include NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite, which orbits the earth at an altitude of about 705 kilometers, or roughly 435 miles.

Other Earthscapes images were taken by photographers like Jim Wark, who contributed several pictures to this pane of stamps.